There are many prior art closures which require some purposeful manipulation, beyond the ability of a child, to permit access to contents of a container. Most such child resistant safety closures have releasable locking means which retain the closure in a sealing relationship to the container, or upon release, permit complete removal of the closure. A particularly effective and simple child resistant closure is known as a "squeeze and turn" closure. An example of such a closure is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,117,945 to Mumford. Such a closure is threaded onto a cooperative container neck. On the inside of the closure skirt are a plurality of inwarding projecting lugs, which engage a plurality of outwardly projecting lugs formed on the container neck. The interengagement of the two sets of lugs normally prevents the rotational removal of the threaded closure. To remove the squeeze and turn closure, the flexible skirt must be squeezed and distorted to disengage the lugs, thereby permitting rotational removal.
However, for many granular of pulverulent products, it is desirable to provide a relatively small dispensing opening for controlled dispensing of small amounts of contents. Complete removal of the closure may not be necessary. Closures which are rotatable on a container neck to open dispensing ports without removing the closure are not new. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,328,246 to Albion and 1,714,368 to Hobson. Most such dispensing closures, however, have not been child resistant. A child resistant dispensing closure is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,830,392 to Kessler et al., but the Kessler device requires a relatively complicated manufacturing process. The present invention provides an improved, child-resistant, squeeze and turn closure with a relatively small dispensing opening.